Chasing Forever
by ArwendeImladris
Summary: Reaper!Bones/girl!Kirk. Bones loves Jamie more than anything, but he refuses to condemn her to a cursed life - so he knows they are together on borrowed time. Until a mission gone awry reminds him how short "forever" is when one only has 23 chromosomes.


**Title**: Chasing Forever 1/2

**Pairing**: Reaper!Bones/girl!Kirk

**Summary**: Bones loves Jamie more than anything he has experienced in his two hundred plus years – but he refuses to condemn her to a cursed life, so he knows they are living on borrowed time. Until an away mission gone awry reminds him just how short "forever" can be when one only has 23 chromosomes…

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Star Trek, and I do not make money from these fictions.

"Mmmm…Bones…" Jamie whines, bucking up into his mouth. "Please…"

He lets out a little chuckle at the begging tone of her voice – he can't help it. Glad of it, when the vibrations cause his little Jamie-girl to jackknife under his hands, pulling on his hair and writhing under his mouth and letting out the most amazing litany of broken "please" and "Bones" and "oh god!".

He relents when she starts to jerk violently under his every soft lick to her clit, moving away from his touch as much as moving towards it – as much as he likes to tease her, he knows that too much pleasure will cause her pain, and that's the last thing he wants.

She did not let him touch her for a week last time he pushed her too far. (His Jamie was probably the only woman in the quadrant who complained about receiving too _much_ oral.)

"You're going to be an insufferably smug bastard for the next couple of days, aren't you?" she mutters, pulling him up for a kiss – licking the taste of her arousal from his lips.

"Well, it's not every day that I can make the great Captain Jamie Tiberia Kirk come four times in an hour," he murmurs against her pouty lips as he gently slips into her. "Do you want to try for five?"

"Bones!" she mock-scolds, laughing. And oh, she's glorious like this, his captain – long blonde hair spilling across her pillow, too-blue eyes with her pupils blown to all hell, and her _lips_…

Bones doesn't know what he's done in the past two-hundred-something years to deserve a girl like his Jamie, but he swears up and down every day that he will never do anything to make her change her mind. And he'll never let her be taken from him.

He would die first. (And considering how hard John-Reaper-Leonard-Bones is to kill, that is saying a lot…)

"Hey, mind on me!" she pouts, purposefully clenching her inner muscles around his slowly thrusting length – the little minx.

"My mind is always on you," Bones tells her truthfully – and maybe it's another one of those times when he's being romantic without intending to be (though of course he doesn't _tell_ her it's accidental romanticism, of _course_ not!) because Jamie just…melts, reaching up for a sweet kiss and gently running her nails down his back.

"Love you," she whispers, soft and shy and…he just has to kiss her some more, reassuring her with his body that he feels the same – that he'll always feel the same. Even fifty, eighty, a hundred years from now, when he's exactly the same and she's…

Well, it's best not to think of that now. So he just keeps kissing, and thrusting, and every couple of breaths he tells her how beautiful she is, how smart, and kind and loyal. He'll save telling her he loves her for later – no matter how many times she might tell him she loves him during sex, she never likes it when he says it back to her now.

So he'll wait. He knows his Jamie-girl – knows what she wants, and needs. And he'll give it to her.

Always.

"Love you," she whispers again, against his lips and he is kissing her beautiful smile – the real one, not the cocky smirk she throws out for all and sundry.

And that's enough for him – he reaches down to rub her clit, and yes, there's number five for her, and the rippling of her muscles pulls him over as well. He releases inside of her, wondering as he does so if she'll let him lick his seed out of her later, and he comes harder at just the thought of it.

"You're amazing," he tells her as he slips out, rolling off her and onto his back and pulling her onto his chest. She fits perfectly, as she always does – meant for him, his Jamie.

"That's my line, Bones," she laughs, and god, he hopes to hear that sound every day for the rest of her life (his true hope is to hear it every day for the rest of _his_, but he refuses to curse her the way his sister cursed him). "You did all the work."

"You can make it up to me next time," he promises her – though of course he doesn't mean it. It isn't a hardship to take control; he loves touching her, can't get enough of it.

"Sounds good. Shore leave is coming up soon, you know…" she trails off, waggling her eyebrows playfully.

"Goddamn it, Jamie – I'm a doctor, not a fucking machine!" he grouches, just to make her reach up and kiss the frown from his forehead, and then his lips.

"You are _so_ a fucking machine, Bones – don't think you have me fooled! And half the things you say you aren't, you are – or at least you were," she informs him, alluding to his long and storied past – but of course he doesn't have a comeback, not when she breaths those words against his lips as she cuddles in his arms.

So Bones just let her win, as always – and if there's a little voice in his head, the one he likes to call "Reaper," that is mocking him for being so goddamn pussy whipped…

Well, he would need a lot more than 24 chromosomes to resist Jamie T. Kirk…

Bones waits in the transporter room, every muscle tense as he waits for the away team to beam back up. Fuck, he knew he should have gone with them…Ten beamed down, and only six were going to beam up – four of whom were injured. Goddamn it – Jamie better be alright…

And the team rematerializes on the transporter pad – Bones looks desperately, but even before they fully solidify, he knows… Jamie's not with them.

He wants to scream, to cry, to fucking break something. What…how…he's not ready! She can't…they were supposed to have more time together.

The away team fully appears, and Bones's medical personnel swarm around to get to the injured. He doesn't move – shock, maybe, he thinks somewhere in the back of his mind. And just the thought of losing his better half – and fuck, if Jamie was here she would be laughing at him for his sappy thoughts. But she's not here…

Spock steps forward, dark green blood running down his side. He's pale – about two seconds away from collapsing. Bones supports him before he can fall – knows that he has to save the goddamn green-blooded hobgoblin – it's what Jamie would have wanted.

"Doctor," Spock mutters weakly. "They took the captain – I estimate that there is an 84.6 percent chance that she is still alive, though that percentage decreases with each moment that passes. Doctor M'Benga can deal with my injuries – retrieve Jamie."

Spock's hand rises to touch Bones's temple in a weak meld, and he quickly transmits the necessary information to the doctor. Although Bones doesn't like this telepathic mumbo-jumbo, he deals – it's for Jamie, after all. If there's any chance he can save her… And then Spock's mind disengages, and his hand falls away, and his eyes fall shut, and Bones knows that the half-Vulcan must have slipped into a healing trance. He passes him off to the nurses – tells them that M'Benga is in charge of the first officer's healing.

Bones is going to save their captain. He grabs two communicators and two phasers – that's all he needs. To hell with the Prime Directive.

And then he quickly checks to make sure that the vial of C-24 that he carries on him is still there – and maybe he's been in denial all this time, but just those few seconds without Jamie, those few moments that seemed to last forever where he truly thought he was in a universe without her, convinced him that he will use it if he has to. And hope she forgives him afterward, because they've never talked about _forever_ – just her lifetime.

Then he snaps out of it, knowing that every second that passes is one second closer to her being too far gone for even the C-24 to bring her back – and he assumes the beaming position.

"Energize."

And his last thought before his molecules separate is that if they've harmed one single hair on her head…well, he's going to go a little less Bones and a little more Reaper on their asses.

Aldin II is a desert planet with higher gravity and lower oxygen content than Earth – much like Vulcan before it was destroyed. The harsh conditions have no affect on Bones, of course – that 24th chromosome is good for some things, other than keeping him alive while everyone he cares about grows old and dies.

Bones follows the information Spock gave him, knowing that Jamie is most likely holed up in the palace – along with the other three females on the away team that had been kidnapped. Jamie is his priority, of course, but Bones will do his best to get them out as well. But Bones doesn't like the fact that the natives attacked and tried to kill the males of the away team, while dragging all the females away. If they've _touched_ her…

He takes a deep breath, clearing his mind of everything but what he needs to save her. Thinking about how they might be treating Jamie won't bring her back – he needs to do that himself.

It's almost ridiculously easy to bypass security. He slips passed the guards without problems – though he would really like to at least knock them out, Bones knows that if another guard finds their bodies, they'll know there's an intruder. Besides, he can come back after he gets Jamie to safety to make sure they understand just why it's a bad idea to take his girl.

Bones manages to get to the great hall without any problems – and then he stops dead, hidden in the shadows.

Because Jamie…Jamie is dressed (if you can even call it that) in some slave's get-up. The top is tight and small and almost a sheer red, barely covering her beautiful breasts. Her stomach is bare – that navel piercing that only he's supposed to see exposed for any of these natives' wandering eyes. And then the harem pants – while they may cover her lovely legs and ass, they are sheerer than even the top, if that is at all possible. Coupled with the gold bangles on her slim wrists and the gold collar on her delicate neck – and her hair! Her gorgeous blonde tresses are down – she's only supposed to wear her hair down for _him_.

And then he looks into those too-blue eyes, and he knows that not a one of these natives are going to leave this room alive. Because they fucking drugged her, too – and if they touched her, Bones isn't even going to make it quick.

He quickly surveys the layout of the hall – and the inhabitants within it. In addition to Jamie and the three other Enterprise women (Gaila the only one he knows by name), there are six Aldins dressed in rich clothes and nine that appear to be guards. The six aristocrats are seated around a long table in the middle of the hall, the women serving them food and drink, while the guards stand stiffly to the side. There are a couple other long tables to the side of the main one, perhaps for when there are larger numbers of guests at the palace.

He puts the phasers to the highest setting before kill (he can't take the chance that he'll hit Jamie or one of the other women with the phaser on kill, no matter how good his aim is after two-hundred-something years of practice) – and then he steps out of the shadows.

One of the biggest Aldins steps forward, barking at him in a harsh, guttural language he doesn't understand – but Bones doesn't need words to read the vicious intent in those beady eyes. He simply raises one of his phasers and fires – the native hitting the floor and the Prime Directive shot to pieces.

He doesn't care. He doesn't care about anything but saving Jamie.

The other guards in the room step forward, yelling in their strange language. Bones closes and bars the door to the great hall – and the Aldins falter, visibly started. The door is about thirty feet tall and made of solid iron – no one humanoid should be able to close it alone.

But Bones has never dealt in _should_.

He turns back to his opponents before they can regroup, and quickly phasers down four more. Jumping onto one of the long tables, he continues to shoot down the Aldins. A few of the smarter ones realize that they aren't going to be able to get close enough to use their knives and swords close range, so instead they start throwing them.

But their weapons aren't meant to be thrown, and they have terrible aim. Only one comes anywhere close to hitting him – and he manages to shift both phasers to one hand and catch the knife with his left.

And by catch, Bones means that the blade slides through his palm and comes out the other side. It hurts – of course it does, the 24th chromosome didn't take away his pain receptors – and the natives jeer, but none of that matters.

He pulls the knife from his hand, and throws it back into the crowd of Aldins – it buries itself into the closest one's brain, and the spray of purple blood almost hits him. That shuts them up right quick – although maybe the sight of his skin knitting together right before their eyes helps.

There are only three guard types left, and he quickly phasers them down, stepping over their twitching bodies towards the more aristocratic types – the fat, greedy ones that drugged his Jamie and forced her to expose her body to eyes that had no business looking upon her beautiful face, let alone any other part of her.

But these natives are also cowards, and they quickly hide behind the women they captured. Bones quickly takes out the two that don't have a woman to hide behind – and Gaila, bless the girl, elbows the one near her in the face, stepping around and forcing him to the ground with a knee in the back. They underestimated the amount of drugs it would take to keep an Orion docile – and Gaila was strong enough to escape from slavery once before, and from more dangerous aliens than these.

"Nice to see you, Doctor McCoy!" she greets brightly, her usual cheery self even in the pink slave outfit they forced her in. She quickly slams the Aldin's head into the ground, knocking him unconscious. Gaila steps on his back on her way to Bones's side, and he quickly hands her one of his phasers, as well as a communicator.

"Did they touch you?" he mutters quietly – dangerously – as they stand off against the remaining three Aldins that are using the Enterprise women as shields. The natives are shouting in their language – but Bones doesn't know what the cowards are saying, and he really doesn't care to.

"No," she whispers back. "They didn't touch any of us."

He snorts at Gaila's attempts to calm him – the Orion knows just how possessive he is over Jamie. He turns down the setting on the phaser, and shoots off two quick blasts – one for the woman to Jamie's right, and one for the Aldin that had been revealed when her body hit the floor. Gaila quickly follows his example – shooting off two quick shots of her own to Jamie's left.

"They didn't touch Jamie, except to get her into her costume," Gaila tells him right after, and if she's trying to be reassuring and calm him down she isn't doing a very good job.

He's hesitant to shoot Jamie, even with the setting set to the lowest stun possible – her system has always been unusual, and it would be just his luck that she would react negatively to the phaser, especially while drugged.

But the option of stunning her - and any chance of him being calm - is stripped away when the Aldin behind Jamie – from his elaborate dress, probably the king of these fucking natives – decides to break the stand-off by pulling a knife from his belt and holding it at Jamie's throat. And his Jamie-girl just stands there, passively, blankly, in that damnable outfit as the Aldin presses the blade into her skin. Bright red blood wells up, slipping down her delicate neck to meet with the bright red of her top.

The Aldin growls at them, and for the first time Bones wishes he could understand the guttural language.

"He says to drop our weapons," Gaila whispers (and Bones forgot that she had one of the experimental universal translators implanted – M'Benga had done it a few weeks ago). "Or…"

"Or?" Bones prompts, though he already knows what the native intends to do.

He just wants to hear it – that way he can feel even more justified when he rips the king's heart out with his bare hands.

"Or he'll kill her," Gaila informs him, angrily glaring at the king.

Bones drops his phaser as the Aldin presses the blade against Jamie's skin just a little bit harder, his other dirty fucking hand reaching around to fondle her breasts.

"What did he say, _exactly_?" Bones growls, Reaper coming ever closer to the surface as the Aldin continues to roughly grope _his_ Jamie.

"He said that he is going to cut her throat and make you watch as he fucks her cooling corpse," Gaila tells him reluctantly as she drops her own phaser at the native's continued growling.

Well, then.

That settles that.

Bones moves faster than he ever has in his entire two-hundred plus years of life – but it is not quite fast enough. The king manages to swipe the knife across Jamie's throat before Bones reaches him – a twist of his neck, and the king is dead. It is too quick, he deserves to suffer, but Bones has more important things to worry about at the moment – like Jamie, and the way she is bleeding out at his feet.

Gaila is applying pressure to the wound on Jamie's neck, but too-red blood is escaping past the Orion's green skin, a terrifyingly stark contrast.

"Jamie-girl," he whispers softly, kneeling at her side and brushing her beautiful blond hair from her face. "You're going to be fine, baby. I promise."

She blinks up at him, pupils blown to all hell so there is only a very small ring of blue left. Bones quickly calls the two other Enterprise girls over, and in their drugged state they have no choice but to comply.

Bones takes his communicator out, flipping it open, all the while never taking his eyes away from Jamie, as Gaila desperately tries to staunch the flow of blood: "McCoy to Scotty. Five to beam up."

He knows Scotty is talented enough to lock onto the only five live signals left anywhere near the communicator.

He knows he should be checking on his other patients, but right now he's not Dr. Leonard McCoy – he's not John Grimm or Reaper or any of his dozens of other names – he's just Bones, a man shaken and terrified because not three hours ago he almost watched the most important person in his life bleed out right in front of him. Besides, he can trust M'Benga and Chapel and everyone else to take care of the others. Jamie was the worst injured – if he had only phasered her when he had the chance…

But thinking about that will not help her now, and she's fine. She's fine, and here with him, and everything is going to be just…

_Fine_.

Except not, because the past few hours snapped Bones out of his denial. He was so concerned about inevitably losing Jamie to old age, while he stayed young and healthy, that he ignored the fact that she is a starship captain – she leads a very dangerous life, and he can lose her at any time. And he cannot stand even the thought of that.

So when she wakes up, they are going to have a discussion about the C-24. Bones knows her, knows her better than anyone and anything, and he knows that she will not turn into a monster. At least, not the kind of monster that Sarge turned into. Jamie will become like him, and while he's always thought of himself as a monster, as unnatural, he could never think of her like that.

So they will talk about the C-24, and hopefully she will agree to take it – to be with him, forever. He does not know what he will do if she says no…


End file.
